USF Sarasota-Manatee campus faculty members Faizan Ali and Zacharias Pieri have each been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor from assistant professor. Their promotions will take effect Aug. 9 following last month's approval by the USF board of trustees.

Faizan Ali teaches in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management in the Muma College of Business and serves as the school’s graduate program coordinator. His scholarship focuses on customer experience, service performance and quality, and customer satisfaction and behavior. He has authored more than 40 international journal articles and conference papers and is an expert in the use of statistical tools, including structural equation modeling and partial least squares. He joined the Sarasota-Manatee campus as an assistant professor in August 2016 after receiving his doctorate from the International Business School, University Technology Malaysia, in 2015.

Zacharias Pieri teaches in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the relationship between religion, politics and violence. Specifically, his studies examine the ideological and strategic development of Boko Haram and the evolution of Islamic State franchises. He has consulted on numerous international projects investigating counter-radical discourses amongst Muslim communities worldwide and has authored three books, the most recent, Boko Haram & The Drivers of Islamist Violence, published in 2019. Pieri began teaching at the Sarasota-Manatee campus in 2016 after working at USF in Tampa as a post-doc and research fellow starting in 2012. He received his PhD from the University of Exeter in England in 2012.